The mysterious case of the stolen packet of biscuits…

Last weekend Mrs Sensible dragged me kicking and screaming to the local supermarket. I hate shopping and pushing a trolley around the aisles saying useful things like, uh huh and not sure and even, wow look two toilet rolls for the price of one! A couple of months ago I used to be able to have a bit of fun hiding a bottle of limoncello or a bar of chocolate under the shopping for it to appear when Mrs S loaded our shopping onto the check out conveyor. Mrs Sensible doesn’t normally like making a fuss in front of people, occasionally she would give me her teacher stare but normally my acquisitions are, blipped, paid for and put in the plastic bags.

Even Batman goes shopping

To make my visits to the supermarket even more unbearable, Ipercoop have introduced a new system, probably marketed as Blip as you go. Special people (like Mrs Sensible) are allowed to go around the store and blip their purchases as they shop, they are even allowed to put them into shopping bags and when they are ready to leave the store, they put the blipper in a special machine and finally pay for their purchases.

The Blipper, Mrs Sensible’s new toy

For many reasons I do not like this system. First I can no longer hide bottles of limoncello as they need to be blipped by Mrs S before they enter the trolley that I am responsible for pushing. Second I am not happy with depriving a check out girl from her job and finally Ipercoop and Mrs Sensible wont let me play with one of the blippers.

Back to last week, Mrs S dragged me off to Ipercoop and we filled the trolley with useless things like bleach, pasta and bicarbonate of soda (We seem to use a lot of this stuff) . Mrs S was of course in charge of the blipper and my sole responsibility was to push the trolley and mutter, uh huh and are we nearly done now? But to my surprise we turned up the biscuit aisle. I say to my surprise because Mrs S and I seem to be on a 24/7, 346 days a year diet (excluding wine and grappa). I held my breath as Mrs S blipped two packets of biscuits and handed them to me, as I dropped them in the trolley; she then handed me a third packet and I duly dropped it in the trolley.

For at least one nanosecond I did wonder if Mrs S had remembered to blip the 3rd packet of biscuits, but as William K Shakespeare famously said “Theirs is not to reason why” and so I put the third packet in the trolley and didn’t mention Mrs Sensible’s possible oversight. When we returned home and staggered into the house with umpteen plastic bags of shopping, Mrs S picked up the till receipt and checked her purchases. Checking till receipts when you return home is a hereditary disorder, I have watched her father do the same receipt checking thing. I normally screw receipts up and stuff them in my back pocket.

Mrs Sensible, realised that we had three packets of biscuits……… but SHE had only blipped and paid for two. We then had the following conversation, you can work out for yourselves who said what.

Did you put another packet of biscuits in the trolley?

Nope!

Are you sure?

Positive, I am only in charge of the trolley.

But we only paid for two packets!

Oops,

Mrs S re-checked her till receipt to see if a third packet was itemised in between the bleach and the bicarbonate of soda, it wasn’t. Obviously I thought this was funny and Mrs S didn’t.

Ok so you have STOLEN A PACKET OF BISCUITS, what are you going to do about it?

I could go back and tell them.

Uh huh you could, or next time you go shopping you could take them back and put them back on the shelf.

I think they have security cameras.

Tricky… How about we just eat them?

The biscuits that Mrs S stole (Ok she only shop lifted one packet)

Over the past week the problem of the STOLEN PACKET OF BISCUITS has weighed heavily on the conscience of Mrs Sensible, I have done my best not to reminder Mrs S too much that she is now not only a sensible school teacher, but she is also a sensible shoplifter. On Friday I crunched my way through a packet of biscuits and casually remarked at how nice, tasty and crunchy they were. So far Mrs S has refused to join me in eating the evidence of her ill gotten gains.

Last night, out of the blue Mrs Sensible said

I know how to solve it.

Solve what?

The biscuits.

Uh Huh.

When we next go shopping I will blip two packets and only buy one packet.

Which gives me at least three days to find a way of foiling her scheme.

This isn’t the first time I have been caught up in illegal activity with Mrs Sensible’s sensible family. I do remember almost getting arrested at Gatwick Airport with Mrs Sensible’s mum and a rather large pen knife. LINK

I’m going to be very French about this. I would say that there are many more occasions on which the supermarket gets it wrong, in their favour, and they don’t check their figures OR lose any sleep over it. The last time I checked my receipt (just before Halloween) I discovered that my mini pumpkin for my soup had tripled in value because the check out girl’s muttering as she checked on her list covered the invoicing of a Jack O’Lantern from the toy department. Of course, I had already cooked the evidence by then.
So it was Karma biting me on the bum for buying veg from the supermarket – never again. Tell Mrs Sensible that your free packet of biscuits is just returns for my loss.

It is obviously weighing on her consciousness and I am trying not to mention it too much, well OK maybe just a couple of times a day. And the biscuits are also weighing on my waist line. To get fit and loose weight I have restarted karate after many many many years. Some days I can actually walk rather than shuffle or limp.

What a terrible crime! I mean what a terrible thing to have this blipper! How can anyone invent something like that? I always stuff secretly some things into the shopping cart in case they suddenly decide to have Blippers too my life will be ruined

how cool is this…we don’t have these little nifty devices where I live…yet—but how cool is that…however I figure it is because there would be many items placed in shopping buggies, aka trollies, that the “innocent” shopper absentmindedly “forget” to “blip”—leaving lots of items off the final receipt….
and those biscuits or yours look an awful lot like digestives—I prefer the chocolate dipped variety 🙂

Hi Yvonne,
As I type, Mrs S is stood paying for two packs of biscuits but will return home with only one, (I know this because I just phoned her) thereby eliminating her original error. This is good news, Mrs S will be happy and I will have yet another packet of biscuits. So all in all it is turning out to be a good week.

You don’t even have cars and roads in Venice do you! It is unlikely you will get fancy blinking blipping things…. We are posh here.. 😉

I very seldom get anything in my favor. On Monday I went to the local “supermercato” called Safeway (it probably isn’t as they are partly responsible for my weight gain) and got Diavolo’s second favorite food from the cat food aisle. I had a coupon for buy five and get five free. I dutifully presented my coupon and my ten packages of Sheba Perfect Portions (they aren’t as for a 15 lb cat you are supposed to feed him nine portions a day! Nine portions is actually 4.5 packages). She looked at the coupon and looked up the price which was .89 per package (pricey I know) and deducted .89 and proceeded to take a phone call as she handed me my receipt. I did not catch what she neglected to do until I was all the way home. Safeway owes me $3.56 and I’m going back on Friday to get my money! If the mistake had been in my favor I would have called them on it too because like Mrs. S I would have lost sleep. Too darned honest for my own good sometimes but I’m sure it will pay off someday….she says as she adjusts her halo;-)

There are no blippers where I shop at my local HEB grocery. Each item is scanned by the checker at the check out aisle. But this was a good pay back for you since you have to push the trolley/cart around. I detest grocery shopping. It’s a lot of work. Those biscuits/cookies looked delicious.